This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, college readiness, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues with additional focus at the national level.

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Monday, April 25, 2016

Racially diverse 'new majority' set to reshape US public school

Not surprising, but notable disconnect in a Florida report titled, “New Education Majority" between parents and schools. On the one hand are the parents who express the following:

A majority of poll respondents said that
when their children make it to college, it is largely due to the
student’s and family’s efforts, while only about 15 percent said the
school’s role was the most important factor.

Then you have those that are ostensibly serving these communities of color faulting them for what they see as families not valuing education. This article points out correctly just how faulty this perception is. As I've written previously, with few exceptions, all parents care about their children's well-being and success. The issue is rather whether schools can even apprehend this caring and respond in an effective manner, on the one hand, and the extent to which parents can translate their caring into effective practices that promote academic achievement. That's why we need schools to partner with parents and community-based organizations that can help address what turns out to be a systematic disconnect. Wade Henderson of The Leadership
Conference Education Fund indicates as much:

“Too often, the prevailing dialogue faults
families of color for bad educational outcomes instead of grappling
meaningfully and seriously with the need for the system to make
different policy choices."

My only quibble with this piece and by extension, the title of the report is with the title and reference to the "new majority." As a sociologist, I must point out that the term, "majority," doesn't refer to numbers but rather to power. That is, a group can be a numerical majority but still lack cultural, political, economic, and social power—and thusly, be a minority. The concept of majority-minority relations points out those that are in, as opposed to those that are not, in power along all of these dimensions. Stated differently, simply being a group that is large in numbers doesn't automatically equate to or mean that they call the shots on the education they receive. Repression and Anglo conformity can still occur. Why aren't we a bilingual or multilingual nation by now if minority groups hold power? That said, this new, numerical majority—which is itself not actually new, but part of the very national landscape out of which majority-minority relations have been forged—has a voice and an important perspective on what a quality school can be. Adequate school funding, highly qualified, anti-racist teachers, and a rigorous multicultural/ethnic studies curriculum is what should begin finding a home in our public education system if parents' and communities' sense of possibility is to take root.

Growing critically conscious teachers: A social justice curriculum for educators of
Latino/a Youth offers an alternative route along the lines suggested above. This is an organic, community-based alternative that invests in the talent that resides

in our communities. To seriously re-order our priorities and effectuate change, we need our community institutions to partner with school districts and universities in order to get the teachers our children need and the education our communities deserve.

Modes of thought| For the first time, classrooms in public schools are filled mostly by
nonwhite students. The concerns of minority parents could change
American schools and education policies.

America’s public schools are a snapshot of a changing America:
Since 2014, for the first time in the country’s history, a majority of
those in public schools have been students of color.
That’s more
than just a statistic. The rise of this “new majority” promises to have
sweeping effects on American schools over time. The voices and interests
of these students and their parents will need to be better woven into
the decisionmaking that affects United States classrooms, many education
experts say.

What’s their emerging message? In part it’s in keeping with the
age-old desires of families everywhere: a good education in safe
schools. But it’s also a call for greater equity in school quality – a
longstanding sore spot in America’s education system that’s growing
harder to ignore. And for some in this new majority, the definition of a
good education includes shaping lessons that truly embrace diversity.

Consider just this one finding from a new poll of black
and Latino parents: The sense of racial bias was so strong for some
parents that a quarter of Latinos and a third of African-Americans
agreed with the statement, “Schools in the US are not really trying to
educate Black/Latino students.”

The poll focused on education, and that one
finding suggests that, despite years of education reforms, states have a
long way to go to succeed in the dawning new-majority era. One of the
places to start, judging by responses in the poll, is figuring out how
to better fund schools in communities that don’t have the tax base of
middle-class suburbia.

“The quality is not the same due to less
funding,” a Latino parent said of schools serving primarily students of
color, during a Chicago focus group tied to the poll. The parent said
the money gap means “less teachers, less technology available … and less
overall academic opportunities.”
And opportunity is the goal for
these new-majority parents. Judging by the poll and focus-group
responses, they want their kids held to rigorous standards and
expectations, and they’re ready to do their part to prod their children
forward. They just want schools to be up to the task at hand.
“Will
states and school districts rise to the occasion and build a K-12
public education system designed to address the educational needs of
students of color? Or will they shirk their duty … and condemn a
majority of public school students to a future with little to no
promise?” asks Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership
Conference Education Fund, in a report on the poll results.

What parents see

Mr.
Henderson’s group is the research and education arm of a large civil
rights coalition, and sponsored the new poll for a report titled, “New Education Majority:
Attitudes and Aspirations of Parents and Families of Color.” The
survey included 400 black and 400 Latino parents and guardians of
school-age children, interviewed by phone in March by the polling firm
Anzalone Liszt Grove Research (ALG).
More than three-quarters in
the poll said schools in low-income communities – often those with many
African-American or Latino residents – receive less funding than schools
in wealthy communities. Parents who believed there are racial
disparities in the quality of education attributed it primarily to this
lack of funding. The next two factors they pointed to: lower teacher
quality and overall racial bias.
“I’ve seen it so many times
before. They don’t offer to black schools what they offer to white
schools,” an African-American parent told a focus group in Philadelphia.
In
all, 6 in 10 Latinos and 8 in 10 African-Americans in the survey said
schools serving their group receive less than schools in white
communities.
The vast majority also believed students should be
challenged more and that low-income students should be held to the same
or higher expectations, because of the importance of education as a path
out of poverty or limited opportunities.
The call for better
schools and greater equity comes at an important moment in national
education policy. States are working to refine their school
accountability systems within the parameters of the new federal
education law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act. The law replaced
the law known as “No Child Left Behind,” giving states greater
flexibility in how to ensure strong schools.
As is often the case
with polls of parents, more than 8 out of 10 said the school their
children attend is good or excellent. But even within this question, the
backdrop of racial equity lurked. Among African-Americans whose child
attended a school that is mostly white, 94 percent rated the school
highly, compared with 75 percent of those whose school was mostly black.
When asked an open-ended question about what factor is most important to make a great school, half cited good teachers.

Considering new priorities

The
poll results may help broaden education policy agendas. In the dominant
narrative around education reform, “a lot of the debates that we hear
about … just don’t reflect what these new-majority parents have to say,”
says Liz King, director of education policy for The Leadership
Conference Education Fund. “The hemming and hawing about opt-out
[related to standardized testing], for example, we just don’t see that
as a priority concern.”
A majority of poll respondents said that
when their children make it to college, it is largely due to the
student’s and family’s efforts, while only about 15 percent said the
school’s role was the most important factor.
But such family support is not always top of mind for educators at struggling schools.
In
a high school in Florida that had some of the worst outcomes, an
intervention leadership team at first thought of the families as largely
unemployed and not particularly valuing education. The team believed
that, in turn, this caused the children to not aspire to higher
education.
After they surveyed the students, they found quite the opposite, according to an account by Rebecca Carlo, then-coordinator of a Florida project working with struggling learners.
Nearly
all the students believed attending school beyond high school was an
important goal, and more than 9 out of 10 said their family supported
their educational goals and encouraged them to keep trying when things
were difficult.
“Too often, the prevailing dialogue faults
families of color for bad educational outcomes instead of grappling
meaningfully and seriously with the need for the system to make
different policy choices,” notes Mr. Henderson of The Leadership
Conference Education Fund in the report, which acknowledges that the new
majority includes Asians and Native Americans, who are likely to be
included in future polls. “We cannot hope to build the public education
system all children deserve without including the parents and families
of the students who will most benefit from a truly high-quality
education.”
But to truly engage with families in Latino and
African-American neighborhoods to ensure equity will require a deeper
dive into the subtext of the poll, said Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade, a
longtime teacher in largely Latino East Oakland, Calif., and a professor
at San Francisco State University, during a panel discussion following
the poll’s release April 11.
When parents of color call for
“rigor” in education, for instance, they aren’t necessarily calling for
more academic tests. “You can’t be engaged in academically rigorous
education without being engaged in a culturally relevant education,” he
said. “For us, the inclusion and centrality of valuing our culture,
valuing our history … is by definition what we mean by academic rigor.”